Here in the Dark
by leave me light
Summary: Fixing things always starts with figuring out what the problem is. The trouble is, sometimes after you've fixed one thing, all the other stuff that is wrong just becomes more glaringly obvious. There are good reasons why their way back to each other is so long and winding.
1. Chapter 1

_This is my first attempt at a Nashville story and my first story in a really long while. Canon is going to eat my storyline up in a really short while and I am a bit worried about what that will do to my motivation, but if this seems worthwhile, I will try to keep going. Cause in my mind, there is still quite a long while to go._

She took a moment before getting out of her car to squeeze her eyes shut and pinch the root of her nose. Then she blew out a breath and opened the car door.

It was a lovely sunny Saturday morning, her first one home in what felt like forever. Well, home in a certain sense, she mused, seeing as she was about to have to carefully knock on the door of her own house and hope to be admitted. It was almost ironic that the decision to take turns at the house was pretty much the last civilized act of cooperation she and Teddy had been capable of. It had all spiraled dreadfully downhill from there, what with all the second-guessing and sniping at each other.

It was time to stop it. All of this was exhausting enough – the demolition of their marriage very much under the public eye; the reluctant yet triumphant tour with a co-headliner that was uncooperative at best and downright hostile most of the time; and the ever present Deacon-issue that seemed to be flaring up again at the most inopportune time, as was its habit. In the light of all this, the fact that Teddy and she were picking completely unnecessary fights with each other was just plain stupid. So if she needed to be the bigger man here and spell it out for the two of them, well, then, that's what she just had to do.

Long evenings in countless hotel rooms had given her certain perspective when it came to this most imminent of her problematic relationships. There were some things that she just plain needed to let go of. It wasn't that she felt she didn't have a right to dictate who Teddy could bring into the house, into his life, because she did – whoever it was, he would also, in the end, bring her into the lives of their children. It was that she'd started to wonder whether she should. Or why she was so hostile about Teddy seeing Peggy Kenter. After all, she certainly didn't want Teddy for herself anymore and, at the same time, she did think that Teddy deserved to be happy.

Teddy was the kind of man who needed to be needed. The way she would never need him. Not only because she didn't love him with that kind of a passion anymore, quite possibly never had. But also because, for a while now, she just hadn't been that kind of a woman, the kind who couldn't exist without someone else.

She had needed Teddy once, had needed his stability and unblinking steadiness to stand by her, though that need had always been destined to be temporary. And she had loved him, enough to choose him to be the father to her child, enough to sincerely believe that they could make their relationship last for good, or she would have never married him. But if the last decade had taught her something, it was that she wasn't going to fall apart, she would not lose herself, for anything. All the tough decisions she had made in life had proved to her that she was willing to make them, was willing to stand by them and, for the most part, could live with the consequences.

Peggy, for all that Rayna knew about her, could well have been the kind of woman Teddy needed – ready and pliant and always slightly in trouble, if only because of her overwhelming feelings for him. Rayna certainly didn't understand women like that, but she didn't really have to, did she? After all, Teddy had never understood Deacon, had never even pretended to try and Rayna hadn't expected him to. Her goal this morning had only remotely to do with Peggy, anyway.

Flipping her hair defiantly across her shoulder, she reached out and knocked on the door. In a moment she heard footsteps, could imagine him rushing down the stairs and rounding the corner of the hallway.

He did seem slightly annoyed to see her and even though she tried to put on one of her bright smiles, if only to reassure herself, she was slightly annoyed at his annoyance.

"You're not supposed to be here until tomorrow evening," he pointed out accusingly and she only just managed to retain her grasp on her long term goals.

"I know," she nodded, wrinkling her brow.

"The girls are not here anyway," he continued.

Again she nodded slowly. "I know that too. I was hoping to catch you alone. May I come in?" It still seemed so odd, so wrong to ask for permission to enter this house.

"Yeah," he answered, stepping aside to let her enter, now obviously curious. "Of course."

She set her purse down on the kitchen counter, stepping into the sunlight pouring in through the big windows of the den. They'd been happy in this house for a little while and then, after that, at least content for quite some time longer, but that was all gone now, torn to pieces by time and circumstance and, above all, the two of them standing there now almost as strangers. Except that they weren't strangers, were they? They still shared a huge chunk of a life together and always would and although the rational sides of them had understood and tried to build a protective wall around that, it was high time they brought their emotions up to speed.

Turning towards Teddy, she contemplated him for a moment, head tilted to the side. Hands in the pockets of his pants, a slightly confused smirk on his face, Teddy looked expectant.

"You know," she said, leaning against the armrest of the couch, "if I really put my mind to it, I might recall what it is that we are fighting _about_. But I'll be damned if I can remember what we are fighting _for_ anymore." She thought she saw Teddy's rigid stance relax a little. "I mean I don't think either one of us considers that there was something left for the other one to do. And I'm sure neither one of us wants to do anything about it anymore. So, could you please tell me what it is that we are doing here?"

"I'm not sure I understand what you—," Teddy began, but she waved her hand impatiently towards him.

"This, you and me," she shook her head. "Bickering and giving each other ultimatums. Accusing each other of ridiculous things. I mean, we've certainly made a mess out of our marriage, but we're correcting that, aren't we?"

"We are?"

"Yes," she asserted emphatically, "by getting the hell out of it. That was a good decision, Teddy. And probably long overdue. It's just, well, I think, afterwards, we've been getting bogged down in…In…" She was looking at him, hoping she had managed to engage him.

"Yeah," he inhaled deeply, flicking his gaze to somewhere above her shoulder, then looking at her again. "Guilt. I think."

She pressed her lips together in a sad smile. Guilt was exactly right. Guilt over failing, over not being good and strong and skilled enough to make it work, but, most importantly, for turning the lives of their children upside down through no fault of their own. The most important job of a parent was to make sure that the children were secure and protected and right now their daughters probably felt anything but. Hence the guilt, spectacular and enormous, quick to rise to the surface, dark and sticky, as soon as they felt they were losing their grip over the whole messy situation. Which was, at least for her, about once every hour lately.

"We have to put it aside, Teddy," she contended, reaching out to put her hand on his arm for a moment in a show of solidarity. "We need to at least try and forgive ourselves or we'll just keep making it worse."

Teddy let out a mirthless laugh. "Do you have any bright ideas about how to do that?"

"Well, I think we can start by letting each other off the hook," she said, tossing her hair out of her face. "I mean, I know that the lawyers will be doing their thing and there are a thousand little details we still need to battle out amongst each other, but that's just inevitable – taking apart a decade of life together shouldn't be easy anyway, but…"

Teddy nodded, "Yeah, we have a hell of a reason not to be petty and we just have to keep reminding ourselves of that." He turned his gaze toward a big portrait of Maddie and Daphne on the mantel.

"Think we can do that?" she smiled, easier now. He returned the smile, in a way of affirmation. She decided to take a step further.

"So, in the spirit of letting each other off the hook, I have decided to lift my veto."

Teddy looked confused again. "Your what?"

"My veto on Peggy Kenter. I assume you are still seeing her?" she raised her eyebrows in question. Teddy squinted, careful not to admit or deny anything until he was certain of where she was going with it.

"I've decided that my objection at this point would be, well, pointless," she went on. "We're all adults here, we've made our decisions, our marriage is over and, when all this dust is settled, when we start to remember again who the other one is and what we've meant to each other, I do want you to be happy. You deserve to be happy, Teddy. So, if she makes you happy and as long as you are discreet, " she looked at him in warning, "well, then, I am lifting my veto."

"Umm," Teddy still wasn't quite sure how to react, "ok?"

"And I hope that, should there be occasion to, you can show similar openness towards me?" she asked expectantly.

"Yeah, let's hope so," he laughed, finally starting to relax. She punched him in the arm lightly. "Yeah, sure, I'll try my best," he conceded.

This had been easier than she had expected, both saying what she came to say and Teddy's acceptance of it. To give herself a moment to contemplate where they had come, she pushed herself up and walked to the fridge, grabbing a bottle of water from the shelf. Taking a long gulp, she realized that it felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders and she could breathe a little easier. Things were a long way from being alright, but it seemed she had managed to take a tiny step towards restoring her equilibrium.

It appeared that Teddy had used this moment to take stock as well.

"So, we're really good? About… things?" he asked, tilting his head and smiling hesitantly as if still not quite believing what had happened.

"It's gonna take a moment to get used to, isn't it?" she mused. "But, in principle, I would say, yeah."

Now Teddy smiled openly and bashfully at her, biting his lip. "You wouldn't want to, by any chance, convince your father of that as well?" he asked, looking almost boyish. Rayna burst out laughing.

"Oh, no," she adamantly shook her head. " No, no, no. You got into that particular bed all on your ownsome."

And she meant that, even if she did commiserate with him a little. She did, after all, understand the impulse that had lead to Teddy accepting her father's dubious offer of support. In her weaker moments she even felt slightly responsible.

She knew that in order to feel fully confident in himself and in his masculinity, Teddy needed to lead. He wasn't, maybe, the most natural leader. Not like her father who forced himself into every situation he could find and then proceeded to micromanage them. Teddy was more the kind of leader that had to be allowed to lead. But, the way Teddy had been brought up, in a highly political family, him assuming a leadership role was what had always been presumed of him, was always a given, even for himself.

The way life had worked out for them, she had pretty much taken that from him as well. Without quite meaning to, she had assumed the leadership role in their family, by being the more obvious of them at the beginning, the more visible one. And then, in time, also starting to earn more until, almost without realizing how it had happened, she was suddenly the one with all the financial responsibility. They wouldn't have survived otherwise, but that was now beside the point. Without that role Teddy was prone to become insecure and start flailing and making desperate moves. Hence whatever that financial mess he had gotten himself into and making an alliance with her father. She could only hope that now that Teddy actually was the uncontested leader, the mayor of the city, he could find enough confidence to really break free and be his own man.

"You'll be fine," she reassured him now, out of habit and sincere goodwill. "In the end, Lamar is just your regular schoolyard bully."

"I think we both know he is a little bit more than that," Teddy replied, but he seemed somehow hopeful, as if he still had a few more tricks up his sleeve himself.

She nodded encouragingly, picking up her bag. "I'd better get going before the girls come back. I'll see you tomorrow evening for the handover."

He walked her down the hallway in contemplative silence. Just before they reached the door, he stopped, looking at her with a wry smile.

"So, Deacon, huh?" he asked, his voice surprisingly free of any venom. Which was what prompted her to answer with candidness that even she herself would not have expected. The topic of that man had always been the most sacred taboo in this house.

"I don't know about that one," she sighed. "Deacon is… Deacon, actually, has a girlfriend."

Teddy couldn't control the snort.

Giving him as sad smile, she shook her head. "No, he really seems to think this might finally be his chance to be happy without me. And, well, after everything, I just don't think I deserve to go ruining it for him."

Putting his hand on the doorknob, Teddy looked her in the eye with what seemed to be benign resignation. "He won't be. Happy. Without you." He let out a loud breath. "You might want to remind him of that. Might save a number of people a lot of heartache."


	2. Chapter 2

**2**

She picked up one of the buns from a bowl on the coffee table, contemplated it for a moment, and changed her mind. Just as she was about to put it back in the bowl, she realized that putting back food you have already touched is, really, inappropriate. Unable to decide how to proceed, she was left standing there, holding the offending piece of bread distastefully between two fingers.

"I don't think it's been poisoned," said a voice from somewhere behind her. "I have not seen Juliette around here today."

Snorting out loud, she turned and faced Bucky, who was standing in the doorway, his eyebrow raised in a challenge.

"You know, they make these things darker to give the impression that they are healthier than plain wheat, but this one looks… kinda orange, doesn't it?" she mused, turning the item in question in her hand to give Bucky a closer look. "I didn't really have time to grab breakfast, so at first this seemed like a good idea, but now I can't really see myself putting this thing in my mouth."

"Yes, I see your dilemma," Bucky noted mockingly. She laughed again.

"Ya know what – if I don't consider this thing fit to be consumed by me, I shouldn't inflict it on anyone else either, now should I," she finally concluded, quickly taking a few napkins from the table, wrapping the bun in them and throwing the whole bunch in the trash. Then she picked up her paper cup with coffee and faced Bucky again.

"How's it going in there?"

"I think they just started. So far so good," he shrugged. "By the way, Juliette might just be the only person who is not here."

On her way towards the door, she stopped, getting a bad feeling about this. "What do you mean?"

"Well, there's the boyfriend we dumped," Bucky began, innocuously enough." And Watty. And, ya know, Deacon…"

Rayna blew out a breath. "What in the world is he doing here?"

"I don't know," he shrugged, "she is his niece?"

The crowd in the studio was, indeed, somewhat larger than she had expected. Scarlett was already on the studio floor, headphones around her neck, checking out some sheet music, the corner of her bottom lip between her teeth in concentration. Gunnar, a whole head taller, was standing behind her, looking over her shoulder and pointing to something on the sheets. Scarlett looked up at him seriously and nodded. The smile Gunnar gave her in return was easy and affectionate and seemed to relax the girl immediately.

Deacon was standing next to the sound technician, murmuring something and making odd gestures with his hands – swooping a flattened palm gently in front of him, then bringing his fingers together and stretching them slowly apart. She knew this particular sign language like the back of her hand – Deacon was describing sound. The technician nodded thoughtfully, reaching out to fiddle with some of the switches on the mixing board.

Rayna went to stand next to Watty, who was leaning against the back wall in the corner of the room. There was no particular need to let anybody know that she was here, not before something had been recorded. Scarlett might even get nervous at her presence – she had known the girl almost her entire life, but Rayna did vividly remember her own first recording session for her very first album, the way she had had to fight to keep the tremor from her voice, and there hadn't even been any danger of any superstars showing up.

She had taken a tentative time-out with the whole Watty-and-her mom situation for the time being. For a while there, Watty had been more of a father to her than Lamar and even though, knowing what she knew now, that might have added a whole other layer to this convoluted mess of hurt feelings and broken hearts in her own family, she could not forget that Watty was a truly good person, a kind and fair man that had been there for her over the years, whenever and however she had needed him.

She did need to talk to him, she needed to know exactly what had happened and she wanted to know her mother better. Watty had known her, maybe been the closest person to her, at a time when she had been not only about Rayna's age, but also in a situation remarkably similar to the one Rayna was finding herself in now – in transition and with two daughters at a vulnerable age that she just didn't seem to be able to do the best by. But she felt that she needed to get things better, straighter, clearer between herself and her own father first. They had wasted too much time already and she had no reason to doubt that Watty would be there, ready to help her, whenever she needed.

"Hey," she mouthed, smiling at him. He grinned back, reaching out to squeeze her arm. Then he turned his gaze back to Scarlett and Gunnar, still seriously discussing something on the sheets in front of the girl. Rayna followed Watty's gaze.

A worrying thought occurred to her. She leaned closer to Watty and spoke quietly into his ear, "They do know that there is no way I can get Gunnar back in at this point, don't they?"

"They know," Watty nodded.

She was left contemplating the pair. There was such unconditional support and affection in Gunnar's demeanor, such eagerness to be of assistance that Rayna immediately felt ashamed of her assumption. When had she managed to become so cynical that she was not even able to recognize young, unconditional love, or forget its existence altogether?

Love had been a battlefield for so long for her now. Not something she could rely and count on, not the kind of soft, padded support system it was for these two, but something that kept swiping the carpet out from under her, complicating all the decisions that would have been so straightforward otherwise.

She glanced quickly at Deacon, who was still unaware of her presence. She could vaguely remember it being just that simple once, taking lightheartedly for granted that the love would always be there, within her reach, lifting her up and propelling her forwards. It had seemed like breathing then, a natural, intrinsic part of her. Until, somehow, it had suddenly become about hard work and compromises and absence. Until she had to give it up as a reason for doing things.

And still, even under all this baggage, love persisted and was just as inevitable as ever, she mused, noting that this knowledge made her both sad and relieved. All these years and changes, people coming and going, failures, fights and giddy triumphs, feeling abandoned and betrayed (doing the abandoning and betraying), occasional joy and peace that she never expected and quite often felt that she didn't deserve and at the end of the day, what she felt in the pit of her stomach, the momentary tightness in her chest when he crossed her mind for no reason whatsoever, was still the same. And there was little consolation in the fact that she had been dead on at 17 when there had been no doubt in her mind that this would last forever. Cause back then she wouldn't have even been able to imagine the utterly convoluted course all this had taken, not in her wildest dreams.

The technician flipped a switch on the board and announced into the microphone, "Ready when you are!" Gunnar stepped away from Scarlett, giving her arm one last encouraging squeeze. The moment he entered the booth, his eyes were right back on the blonde girl on the other side of the glass. Scarlett, the technician and Deacon simultaneously put on their earphones. The track, with a slightly tinny undertone, started to quietly play in the loudspeaker mounted to the ceiling in the back of the booth. And Scarlett started to sing, her voice pretty and clear.

After the first take had uncertainly come to a stop, Watty said quietly, "All you strong, talented women seem to keep leaving your men behind. Just far enough for them to spend their lives thinking they can catch up to you." Gunnar's eyes almost hadn't left Scarlett.

"I'm sorry?" she asked, though Watty's meaning had been fairly clear.

"They stumble, lose focus for a moment. They're men, after all, delicate musician types with their hearts always on their sleeves. And by the time they get up and dust themselves off, you're gone. Out of reach," he shrugged.

Rayna tilted her head to the side, looking at him reproachfully. "For a moment, Watty?" It seemed to her that this was a conversation they had had countless times over the years. Quite often without any words, just Watty's pointed looks of incomprehension and disapproval.

Watty gave a sad snort, "Yes, you might have a point there. But still, wouldn't standing next to someone be better than always looking over your shoulder to see if they're still there?"

The answer to this question was obvious. _You don't always get to choose,_ she wanted to tell him, but she guessed that he knew that painfully well himself.

Instead she asked, eyebrows raised in challenge, "Well, we'd have to go backwards to catch them, wouldn't we?"

"No," he shook his head, a fatherly smile on his lips. "You'd just have to stand still for a moment. They've only ever been two steps behind you the whole time."

For two people trying to remain inconspicuous in the back of a recording studio, this was getting a bit too loaded. She looked away, at the levers and knobs of the board, at the microphone in front of Scarlett's mouth, at the guitar propped up against the studio wall, at the backs of the heads of the men in front of her. _I feel like if I stop and stay still, I might never be able to move again,_ she thought. _His hair is getting long_, she mused.

To which, of course, Deacon turned around in his chair and looked directly at her staring at him absentmindedly. The lazy, open smile that spread across his face was easy and familiar. Returning it was not so easy, but she did it anyway. He yanked the headphones off and stood up, coming to an unsure stop in front of her. She motioned for him to walk outside the studio with her, getting tired of the murmuring.

"Fancy meeting you here," he said carefully, the moment they were out.

"No," she emphatically shook her head, "I am here to see how my best and only artist is getting along. I have a lot riding on this, ya know." She stopped, giving him the opportunity to explain himself. He didn't.

"She's getting into it, I think," he offered instead. "I mean, it's not like she hasn't recorded before. It's just, this is the real thing. Remember our first real studio session?" His smile was crooked, crinkling one side of his face.

"Yes, painfully clearly," she conceded, "For the first hour of so, you being there was the only thing that kept me from throwing up. I kept seeing my whole life flashing in front of me."

"All twenty years of it," Deacon mocked.

Her smile was benign, "It was enough." And he knew it had been. All the things she had lost in the struggle to remain herself. All the things she had gained because she had managed to.

They were left contemplating each other for a moment. Just as she was about to ask him, straight and direct, what he was doing there, he stirred, announced, "Well, I'd better get back in there," and turned back towards the studio door.

Stacey, just coming into the hallway hesitantly, was only able to catch sight of his back disappearing through the studio door. Which left her and Rayna, looking at each other uncomfortably.

"Hey," Stacey greeted, only just keeping herself from making an awkward little wave with her hand.

"Hi," Rayna replied. Was it really necessary for everybody and their girlfriend to be in this studio today?

"Do you…," Stacey started, frowning slightly as if displeased with herself, "Do you think he'll be long?"

Rayna chided herself for being unkind, if only in her thoughts. Deacon wasn't going anywhere from her life and Stacey didn't seem to be going anywhere from Deacon's, so it would be so much easier, not to mention polite (and Rayna Jaymes was nothing if not polite) if she could just… Oh, screw it…

"Seeing as I have no idea what he is doing here in the first place," she announced, with obvious false cheer, "I can't really tell."

"Oh," Stacey let out. "I'll… Just…" She looked searchingly around herself, trying to find a place to retreat to.

Rayna sighed, shaking her head. "No, I'm sorry. You can go in and ask him yourself. He just sometimes gets so caught up in his own ideas that he forgets that he hasn't really let anybody else around him know what they are."

_And I seem to forget that I am the _former _girlfriend talking to the _present_ girlfriend and it is not really my place to teach her what he is like._

"Just… go ahead in there," she waved absently towards the door. Gathering herself, Stacey began to walk in that direction. "It's good to see you," Rayna made a last desperate grab at polite.

"Yeah, you too," Stacey smiled, nodding.

_She's pretty,_ Rayna thought. _And perfectly nice. And not me. At all._

* * *

She was standing in his kitchen, clutching a glass of water and staring out the window when he came home. She could hear the key being put in the hole, and the door cracking open. She could hear him sliding his satchel on the hallway floor and lay his guitar gently against the wall. She could hear him moving towards her through the house.

"Nice shirt," he announced from the doorway and, even without seeing, she could hear the smile in his voice.

Slowly, she turned around. "Oh, this old thing?" she asked with mock coyness.

"It is, actually," he noted, reaching out to brush his fingers against the worn soft cotton of the checkered shirt she was wearing. "Must be, I don't know, more than twenty years now. Where did you find it?"

"From your bedroom floor, actually," she chuckled, raising her hand to slip her fingers through his hair. "Twenty years, huh? You really have kept your figure, haven't you?"

"Yeah, well," his smiling gaze drifted across her shoulder for a moment, somewhere out the window and far beyond, Stacey felt. "I guess I find it easier to stay in shape than make myself let go of these shirts that have been so good and comfortable to wear for so long."

Later she would wonder how she had managed to fit everything that she had learned about this man into the picture that she had created of them, how she had managed find his quaint quietness and resistance to sudden movements only endearing, not a big blinking warning sign.

Right then, all she saw was that he was happy that she was there, waiting in his home, in his shirt. And happiness was not something she had ever had to take at anything but face value.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: And I want to thank my beta, KarenES

**3**

She had already phoned Liam to announce that she was coming over so that they could resume the work on her album. The tour was taking a break, she had just handed off her children to their father for another week and the overall frenzy of her life seemed to be letting up slightly, leaving her a bit dazed, but decidedly raw. Liam had laughed and said that her recent life certainly sounded like an ample source for a country album. Or two. And that she should come by the next day, some time after three in the afternoon so that there would be a decent chance that he had woken up, possibly even gotten dressed.

"Ya know," she stated, the moment she had pushed through his front door, "it really isn't particularly nice to make fun of a friend's life!"

Tossing his bangs out of his eyes, Liam smirked and leaned forward to greet her with a kiss on the cheek.

"Too soon, huh?" he asked, not even trying to look contrite. "All right, but do let me know when it's ok, because there's just so much material there. I mean, broken marriages, lost loves, it's all very melodramatic…"

She just looked at him reproachfully for a moment, but it seemed to have no effect on him whatsoever. He just quirked his eyebrows at her boyishly, so Rayna gave up and turned to walk into the loft, muttering, "You've no idea…"

"I see you've managed to get up," there was a note of mock praise in her voice. She set her purse down on a stool and shook out of her jacket.

"Well, yeah," Liam nodded, "it is five o'clock. I've been up for hours. Two, at least."

"You do realize that normal people are starting to finish their work days already?"

He laughed, "And what would you know about how normal people spend their days?"

She couldn't help but smirk back at him. What was it that he had accused her of being about when she had first come to this place? Moms and SUVs? He certainly knew better by now.

"Anyway," she announced, shaking her head, "the album. I think we've come too far and I've fought too hard for it to let it just fall through the cracks now. "

"You sure about this?" Liam picked up a mug of coffee from the table and sipped from it casually. "As I remember, our last bout of cooperation kind of ended in an explosion."

She walked closer to him and patted him on the chest reassuringly. "Our last bout of cooperation, the way I see it, ended with me in a slobbering heap on your bathroom floor. Very country _and_ rock'n'roll, don't you think? But that's neither here nor there."

The smile on his lips turned thoughtful. "Rayna, I hope you do know that it was never about money," he looked straight at her and sighed, "that it was mostly about you."

"No," she shook her head, "I still think that it was mostly about you." Seeing that Liam was about to protest, she raised her hand. "Then again, I'm guessing you probably saw you and I as pretty much the same thing."

He shrugged wordlessly, expecting that she wasn't done.

"I know that you didn't mean to use me, Liam, but at that moment it sure felt like you did. And then you made it so much worse by getting all glib and defensive about it when you got caught." She tilted her head, the look in her eyes softening. "Look, I get that you've an image to uphold - as a guy who thinks the Earth revolves around him. But I know you now, I know you're better than that. I know that you care. All I'm saying is that it's okay to let that come through when there's just the two of us."

He raised his hand, rubbing his eyebrows in consternation and wincing. "It just all came out in such a fucked up way. The lashing out was just pure panic, I think. I just tend to revert to my 14-year-old self when put on a spot. I should really work on that."

"And I'm sure the fact that it was Marshall who outed you didn't help matters much," she sympathized. "I think that we can move on from here. Because I know for a fact that nothing like that will never, ever happen again."

"Thanks," Liam muttered, looking at her with respect and hope. "Our thwarted project has really been nagging at me. In fact," he set the coffee mug back down and walked over to his music center, snapping his fingers, "there's something I want you to hear."

"Yeah, I brought something along as well." Rayna plopped herself down on the couch.

* * *

By the time the last chords of a rough live recording of "Stronger Than Me" vibrated through the air, she had a glass of wine in her hand and her feet up on the couch. Liam was slouching on the other end of it, fiddling with the cork of the wine bottle and listening intently.

"It still feels odd, doing this without him," she said, after silence had filled the air for a moment. "He and music have meant the same thing to me for almost as long as I can remember."

"So I gather you two still haven't gotten your act together, huh?"

"Yeah," Rayna slowly shook her head, "no, I don't know. Everything seems to be shifting around us. I guess it has been for a while now."

"Well, that song is one hell of a public confession," Liam prodded.

Rayna drew her fingers through her hair in frustration. "Or just an expression of total confusion."

"You wanna talk about it?"

Tilting her head to the side, she shifted her gaze to the red brick wall of the loft. If she'd been able to put what she was feeling into words, give it a proper name, she probably already would have. She'd told Liam once, the first time she had been in this loft, that she wanted to blow up the box. Well, all the boxes in her life, all the boxes that she had taken years to carefully and meticulously organize and reinforce, had been spectacularly blown up now. And she was left sorting through the rubble, trying to figure out what was still there.

"You kinda think up these prepackaged answers to things," she began carefully, taking a sip from her wine glass, "just to be certain that you react like you're supposed to, 'cause so much of your reacting happens in the public eye, and that you look like you know what you're doing. You know, like "I think that it's just swell that there are these young singers coming up who bring country music closer to today's kids!" Or "Yeah, I'm really excited about moving into this big huge house with my husband." Or "Yeah, Deacon and I have a history, but that's precisely what it is, history." She let out a sad snort. "And then, at some point, you just accept those answers yourself and sort of never think to question how much they actually reflect what's really going on. Cause it's way simpler that way, there's so much stuff that you can just put aside and not deal with."

"There's no way you think all those things are true," Liam protested.

"No, not all of them," Rayna admitted. "I still think that the new pop country is crap. But some of them are true."

"So you think you and Deacon are history?"

She shook her head, slowly and tentatively at first, then with greater conviction. "No, I don't. Not anymore. But I think I might've." She frowned, "For quite a long time there, I might have thought that we'd never go there again."

"And now?" Liam shifted on the couch, picking up a tumbler from the coffee table and swirling the amber liquid in it around before taking a sip.

"And now it might all have become irrelevant." There was a slight undertone of hysteria in her perky answer. Liam tilted his head in question.

"'Cause now he has a girlfriend. A pretty, blonde thing. A vet called Stacey," she sighed dramatically.

Liam waited out another one of her thinking pauses.

She felt paralyzed by this relationship of Deacon's, whenever she thought about it. There was nothing she could do about it, and even if she could, she had no idea what it was that she was supposed to do. And the scary, ironic, crazy part of it was that she knew exactly what this was and how this worked. She squeezed her eyes shut in frustration.

"I get it," she shrugged. "I've been in that exact same place. Loving someone like that is easy, someone who is completely outside this whole life we keep trying to turn into art. And after being through one of those wringers that Deacon and I keep putting each other through, just the fact that it's easy gives you this giddy rush that's so simple to mistake for happiness. Or maybe it is happiness."

She was fully aware that she had loved Teddy for all the ways he was not like Deacon, had been happy in that marriage because of those ways. The love and the happiness had never felt any less real because of that.

"But that wears off," Liam said thoughtfully, tilting his glass and staring into it, "and everything becomes kind of… dull and faded and pedestrian. If it's not a real connection, if it's just an easy way out, it won't last."

Rayna's smile was sad and tense, "Yeah, but take it from me, it can last for quite a while. It can last for years. And even when it's not quite there anymore… After Deacon got sober, in all these years, he's become so careful about the risks he takes in his life, in his relationships, like he doesn't quite trust himself with the real ups and downs. I think at least a part of him might want that stability, that slightly dull and faded connection." She pressed her lips together, shaking her head again in disbelief, "And the sad thing is, I get that impulse, too. I've been there as well."

Liam looked up at her, eyes wide and incredulous, "Come on, he has not been careful in relationships – he has waited for you."

"No, he hasn't," Rayna insisted. "He still has feelings for me, he hasn't completely let go, maybe. But he hasn't waited. He's had no reason to."

"Rayna, trust me, I've seen that lost puppy dog look he sometimes gets when he looks at you," Liam announced emphatically. "I know I might not be the most sensitive guy out there but I've been both on the receiving and the giving end of that exact look. He has waited."

"Oh, God," Rayna moaned, emptying her wine glass in one determined gulp. "So, what the hell happened? He couldn't wait a minute longer?"

"Would it have made a difference?"

She threw her hands up in frustration, "Well, I don't know! We might never know now."

"I knew that the ultimate drama queen was in there somewhere," Liam pointed an accusing finger at her from across the couch.

"What?" Rayna frowned.

"Look, I like you, Rayna," he stated. "You're one of my favorite people in the whole world, which, given my general lack of enthusiasm towards mankind, probably isn't saying much, but..."

Rayna raised an expectant eyebrow at this introduction.

"You are way too old to be this angsty," Liam sighed.

She would have liked to reject the implication, but couldn't really fault him its content. "If you're too old to be a college student, you're too old to be this angsty," he qualified. "You need to make up your mind. If you want him then you need to go and get him. And don't go telling me that he's in a relationship," he cut off her likely protests. "You really think that some blonde vet he has known for five minutes would be any kind of a competition to you? But if you decide that it's too much, that you're too scared or something," Liam raised a challenging eyebrow, "then you have to let him go. Really let him go this time. Cause if you aren't ready now, after a decade of itchy fingers and loaded looks, then when will you ever be?"

She opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again. Just declaring herself confused was, of course, another easy way out. She just felt like she deserved a few of those for now. Liam was right. Maybe not about the marching up and claiming her man part, but definitely about the need to make some decisions. Not that she'd allow him the pleasure of letting him know he'd been right.

"Well, look at you, doling out relationship advice like you actually know what you're talking about," she finally announced, setting her wine glass on the table and pushing herself up from the couch. "How about we actually get some work done now?"

Liam threw his head back and laughed. "Well, touché, my lady. What else have you got?"


	4. Chapter 4

_Again, I would like to thank my very prompt and helpful beta, KarenES. And everybody who has taken the time to read and favorite and, especially, comment. Your reviews give me wings :)_

**4**

The dog was usually pretty hyperactive in the evenings, running around the house for no reason he could see and bringing him stuff that it must have known it shouldn't have, for the express purpose of getting a rise out of him, to coax him into playing with it. He kept stumbling over kitchen towels and socks and sports shoes and old magazines all over the house and it would have been extremely annoying if the wretched thing hadn't looked so damn cute, coming around the corner with another offending item between its teeth, looking gleeful and expectant.

Right now, though, Sue lay curled up next to him on the porch stairs, having just polished off half a bowl of kibble that he had brought out for it along with his own cup of coffee. He reached out his hand to scratch it behind its ear and the dog let out a satisfied groan in its sleep, adjusting its head to give him better access. Deacon chuckled to himself and took a sip from his steaming mug. He tapped the back of his head lightly against the railing post behind his back and then leaned in, letting his eyes take in the quiet dusk rolling out in front of him.

It was a rare evening by himself at home. There hadn't been much excuse for those lately and he hadn't really had the time to wonder whether he missed them. The tour was on a break and Stacey had gone to visit family for the long weekend.

She had asked him to go with her, to meet her folks for the first time, but something in him had fought against the idea. Had fought so violently that he'd refused. He hadn't even managed to think up a proper excuse, something that would have had an aftertaste somewhat less bitter than the truth. _I'm not ready,_ he had said, but what he hadn't said was that, at that moment, it didn't quite feel like he'd ever be ready. And that feeling startled him into this reverie on the porch.

Stacey had clearly been perplexed and she wasn't the only one who was confused about how all this had played out. She'd looked about as expectant as Sue with one of its forbidden toys when she presented the idea to him. She'd talked, fast and excited, about how this was the perfect opportunity and how she wanted to show him where she came from and how he'd get along great with her family. All he could do was look at her with a rigid frozen smile on his lips, trying desperately to swallow the uncomfortable lump of panic that was rising to his throat. She hadn't understood his reticence or his excuse and, quite frankly, neither had he.

It had, after all, been him who, completely unprompted, had given Stacey the key to his house. As clear a sign as any that he was willing to let her in. They had spent as much time together as their jobs would allow and he had really enjoyed it, basked in the ease and normalcy of all of it, in the tender care of a beautiful woman. No one could have been more surprised than he himself when he then suddenly hit the wall of a garden variety commitment phobic. And he really hadn't thought he was one. He'd thought that his commitment to Stacey had been conscious and deliberate and full.

Deliberate and full, he now realized, and completely on his terms. Even giving her the key had been on his terms, his unilateral choice that had clearly taken her aback a bit. And it hadn't, maybe, been like that from the very beginning, because those things, in his experience, tended to be mutual decisions. But from the moment he made up his mind to give it a go, to call her back, it had been his tempo and his choices; even, mostly, his house.

He'd thought that he liked the fact that Stacey was so far removed from music and music business, that she'd take him away from it and give him some much needed distance. But now he started to think that maybe that was just all about him and his well-constructed walls too. Because it clearly meant that Stacey would only have as much access to his life as he himself specifically allowed. He did want to share his life with her: He'd asked her to come to New York with him after all, had taken her to the arena, had introduced her to people, only slightly hitching when he confirmed to Rayna that Stacey was his girlfriend. He'd been glad that she was there, that he finally had something of his own to hold close in a life that was generally pretty isolating, shallow and lonely. Something to ground him between the high of the screaming, cheering crowds and the low of the impersonal hotel rooms. But had he just used her as insulation against all the sadly reoccurring themes of his life?

_God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,__  
__The courage to change the things I can,__  
__And wisdom to know the difference._

To him the Serenity Prayer, the Alcoholics Anonymous motto that he had kept chanting at meetings in church basements and community centers and designated dressing rooms in the back stages of arenas for almost half his life now, had always been about control. About figuring out what he could control in life and letting go of the things that he couldn't. The distinction had not been that easy to make at first; time and again he had overestimated his own strength of mind and underestimated the things that influenced him.

Until finally, at some point during that last stint in rehab, some excruciating clarity arrived about everything that he had completely lost control over and his own utter weakness. He realized that if he was to come out of all this alive and with something to show for it, he sorely needed to begin to err on the side of caution.

And so, one by one, he'd started to let go – of alcohol and pills, of late nights and bar stools, of jam sessions and long tours, of bad friends and third dates. Until all that was left was Rayna, and he had to somehow try to reconcile his new life philosophy with the fact that he would probably never be able to let go of her.

So he came to see his staying around her as a sort of a penance for all the shit he had pulled before. For having been a selfish asshole in general, but especially with her.

There was a certain dynamic to their relationship, a rhythm that had achieved a painful predictability over the years. They'd inch closer to each other, slowly but surely, focus getting tighter, regard for their circumstances thinning, until one or the other pushed it to the limit, stretched the cord as far as it would go and, like a yoyo, they'd snap away again, usually with enough of a jolt to give both of them whiplash. It would be him, with words that for some reason he could not keep back anymore, even if he knew perfectly well that no good could ever come of saying them. Or her, looking up at him with big blue eyes like pools, full of unshed tears, not even having to say anything for him to know that she was being torn to pieces by her life.

And they'd retreat once more, knowing that all this would start all over again sooner or later. He'd be here on his porch again, clutching a cup of coffee, trying desperately to remind himself why it wasn't a tumbler of something else instead; bleeding all over the stage every third Thursday at the Bluebird with nobody being the wiser. She'd be at home, in that sprawling hulk of a house in Belle Meade, probably hugging her kids good night and reminding herself all the reasons why she loved her husband. And, after they'd caught a breath, they'd both know that, again, there never really was a choice, never any chance that this time it would end in something different.

And the only thing that even slightly resembled control in this whole dance was that, at the end of the day, Deacon knew his place in his life because he knew his place in hers – he couldn't go any further, he couldn't come any closer either.

What he had never really dwelled too deeply on was why she stuck around for all these years, why she had imposed this sentence on herself.

Things were different now - her divorce and whatever she had going on with Liam and his relationship with Stacey gave their rhythm a good old scramble. But the last time they went through their cycle he couldn't, for some reason, bring himself to pull back from that imaginary brink they had set for themselves during all these years. He had dug in his heels and kept stretching that cord, kept pushing it. Saying out loud that it had always been her, that she would be the only thing to make him happy – and even if she knew it already, giving voice to that truth definitely went against their tacit agreement. Making her sing a song with him that was designed to get them in trouble. Picking fights and forcing her to admit that she had this torturous tendency to pretend like all her choices weren't already made. Forcing her to either break, or push him away for good.

Thinking back, he couldn't even remember having any specific goal in mind, a specific reason for doing this. But in the end, the cord of his yoyo was all stretched out and frazzled and he himself bruised and bloody from keeping it taut for so long.

And in addition to that, when Rayna had come to see him after things had ended with the Revel Kings, after that stupid article, worried that he might have fallen off the wagon again - after almost thirteen years, for God's sake - he also realized that his penance was far from done. His sentence for screwing it all up with her wasn't served, and quite possibly never would be. 'Cause she said that she trusted him to keep it together, she might have even thought that she did, but in the end, if all it took was one magazine article… Well, who the hell knew?

The reason Juliette had found him in a miserable heap on his couch later that evening, surrounded by the remains of his guitar and upended furniture, was that this time the end had really started to feel chillingly final and he was still unable to let go.

He had later wanted to explain to Juliette that what he had said had not been strictly true. That while he certainly had kept the hope alive, somewhere in the back of his mind, most of the time he was aware that life was a lot better if you didn't try to kill yourself all the time. And most of the time, that was the reason he was staying sober. It was just that some of the time, that lingering hopeless hope had brought him palpably closer to not staying sober. Some of the time, when he couldn't find the strength to not wallow, he would just curl up and lament all the time he had lost and all the chances. And at times like that it really, truly, seemed to him that he had gotten sober for her and had stayed sober for her and it had all come to nothing.

He had really started to think that maybe, if he couldn't let her go, he would finally manage to at least get some control over his relationship with Rayna. That if he'd managed to somehow break the pattern of their relationship, he'd maybe also find a way to not be so damned emotional about every aspect of his contact with her. That maybe he'd finally be able to at least keep her at arm's length. Stacey coming along seemed to reinforce this notion. It appeared like he was finally getting his heart under control.

It had seemed like such a victory, such a relief. It's just… it didn't really take a songwriter to know that this was not really what love was supposed to feel like – it wasn't supposed to be under control.

But maybe control and stability was better than the turmoil that came with the knowledge that, for better or worse, your fate is inescapably tied to one person; the crazy highs and lows that came with The One?

He had certainly been feeling a whole lot better lately than he had in a long, long time, happier and more relaxed.

Except for that one moment after his birthday party when Rayna had taken his hand, looked him in the eye and told him that she wanted to do right by him. When for a fleeting moment it had really seemed that she would give them another chance. It had only lasted a heartbeat and in the end left him more confused than ever, but while it did last… oh, boy, it felt like this was what he had been living for for the past decade. And how the hell do you give something like that up?

Here, on the porch, with the sunlight fading all around him and his dog snoring lightly by his side, he tried to remind himself that he was balancing something that was real and tangible up against something that decidedly wasn't , something that was maybe only a notch above being a figment of his own imagination. It was just hard, almost impossible to see it that way, 'cause that would have meant that he'd only been dreaming for half his life.

He tried to remind himself that it was about time he chose reality and that he owed it to himself and to Stacey to try to stick to it.


End file.
